A collaborative research team from Peking University and Hunan University has demonstrated a novel approach to generating powerful, structured terahertz (THz) pulses with programmable polarization textures. The study, titled “Generation of Strong THz Pulses with Topologically Tunable Polarization Features”, has been published in Ultrafast Science.

Rapid progress of advanced laser sources have accelerated the development of laser ranging technologies, focusing on two comprehensive strategies: one is appealing to the promotion of measurement performances, and the other is simplifying the complexities of system architectures. Beyond the coherent-light counterpart, optical chaos originating from the laser nonlinear dynamics has fueled scenarios toward the parallel ranging for breaking the severe channel jamming. It has raised one striking question of how the “parallel chaos” could be upgraded and then reshape the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) ecosystem. Here, we introduce a multi-color pulsed chaos, by leveraging the accessible noise-like evolution in nonlinear dissipative systems to elevate a “single-pixel” architecture for parallel ranging. By the spectro-temporal manipulation, the broadband chaos can be tailored into multi-color parallelization without high-speed optoelectronics. Based on this chaos, the parallel ranging system achieves submillimeter-level ranging accuracy and throughput of hundreds of megahertz, as well as enabling a simplified architecture of a single transmitter, reference, and receiver. Our approach emphasizes the advancement in both the parallel ranging and the single-pixel architecture. Notably, the pulsed form of optical chaos offers revolutionary potential and catalyzes the progression of massively parallel ranging towards a new era.

This work presents a miniaturized spectrometer spanning 5.2 THz across the full C-band by pairing a GHz-tunable laser with a stabilized Si₃N₄ soliton microcomb. The system achieves kHz-level frequency resolution and retrieves both amplitude and phase—resolving molecular absorption lines in a gas cell and extracting dispersion from integrated photonic devices. The demonstrated stability and precision, along with a simplified architecture, point toward fully integrated, chip-scale ultrabroadband spectroscopy in future implementations.

Delta.g has raised £4.6M to commercialise the world’s first field-tested quantum sensor enabling real-time spatial intelligence.  The funding will enable Delta.g to deliver field systems through pilot deployments across key industry and government partners, including the UK Department for Transport.

Strong Northern Lights-like activity is the standout feature of today’s weather report, which is coming at you from a strange, extrasolar world, instead of a standard TV studio. That is thanks to astronomers from Trinity College Dublin, who used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to take a close look at the weather of a toasty nearby rogue planet, SIMP-0136.

The exquisite sensitivity of the instruments on board the space-based telescope enabled the team to see minute changes in brightness of the planet as it rotated, which were used to track changes in temperature, cloud cover and chemistry. 

Surprisingly, these observations also illuminated SIMP-0136’s strong auroral activity, similar to the Northern Lights here on Earth or the powerful aurora on Jupiter, which heat up its upper atmosphere.

This discovery paves the way for more cost-effective and efficient catalysts that could significantly lower the barriers to industrial-scale CO₂ conversion processes. The technology holds promise for contributing to the development of renewable energy sources, reducing reliance on fossil fuels, and mitigating the impacts of climate change. It may also inspire further research into other catalyst-support combinations, potentially leading to breakthroughs in various electrochemical applications.

Solid-state phosphorescent materials with stimulus-responsive properties have been widely developed for diverse applications. However, the task of generating excited states with long lifetimes in aqueous solution remains challenging due to the ultrafast deactivation of the triplet excitons and the difficulty in regulating stimulation sites in an aqueous environment.  Here, we present a microscale rigid framework engineering strategy that can be used to modulate the phosphorescence properties of carbon nanodots (CNDs). Ultrasound-responsive phosphorescent CNDs with a lifetime of 1.25 seconds in an aqueous solution were achieved.